Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire

Theatre had a strong, if variable, presence in the French- and Portuguese-speaking countries of Africa. Cameroon (see above in its Anglophone context) had an active theatre with a significant base in the universities, and it produced two major figures of the Francophone theatre, playwright Guillaume Oyono-Mbia and the director-devisor-playwright Nicole Wéré-Wéré Liking. Mbia was noted for his broad comedies—for instance, Trois prétendants…un mari (1964), Le Train spécial de son excellence (1978), and Le Boubier (1989). Liking’s main impact was in Côte d’Ivoire, where she moved in 1984 and formed the innovative Ki-Yi Mbock Theatre. That group explored the theatrical potential of ritual, making it relevant to modern concerns and using strong elements of physical performance, music, and dance. Liking’s own playwriting commenced in Cameroon, with La Puissance d’Um (1979)—the first of what are described, because of both form and content, as her “ritual theatre” plays—and developed in the stimulating environment she found in Côte d’Ivoire.

A number of other companies in Côte d’Ivoire made (and continue to make) important contributions, some—such as Atelier Théâtre Attoungblan and the Sekedoua Company—inventively exploring the traditional African storytelling form. Leading playwrights in that vein were Bernard Dadié (Béatrice du Congo, 1970; Les Voix dans le vent, 1970), and Bernard Zadi Zaourou (L’Oeil, 1974; La Tignasse, 1984). Dadié’s work is mainly political social realism—though on a large scale—whereas Zaourou is both more stylistically adventurous and more outspokenly radical. L’Oeil was banned in 1975 on the grounds that it incited civil disorder. Its plot is macabre: a district governor attempts to bribe his wife, who has discovered his infidelity, with a new healthy eye to replace one blinded in an accident. An impecunious minor official is bribed to offer his own wife’s eye for the purpose, and, thus, the play exposes a world of official corruption and cruelty. Younger playwrights who were revolutionary in both form and content include Charles Zégoua Nokan and Amadou Koné.

Senegal

Senegal has a particular claim to be at the heart of the development of modern Francophone theatre through the innovative teaching of drama at the École Normale Supérieure by William Ponty in the 1930s. Many of Africa’s later Francophone playwrights either studied at that school or were influenced by its encouragement of theatre. The nation’s leading playwright is Cheik Aliou N’dao. His plays have a strong historical theme, as in L’Exil d’Albouri (1967), or discuss traditional social issues, as in Les Fils de l’Almany (1973), which debates the practice of circumcision. Many of the playwrights of the 1970s and ’80s were drawn to historical themes, often (as in the case of Seyni Mbengue’s Le Procès de Lat Dior, 1971) glorifying the heroes of the past from the viewpoint of the new nationalism. In addition to French, playwrights on occasion work in the national language of Wolof.

Republic of the Congo

One other Francophone African nation with a significant modern theatre is the Republic of the Congo, where three playwrights in particular have established major reputations: Sylvain Bemba, Sony Labou Tansi, and Tchicaya U Tam’si. Bemba (writing as Martial Malinda) offered the play L’Enfer, c’est Orféo (1968), a satirical and fantastical work of political allegory. Those qualities were also evident in his later plays, such as L’Homme qui tua le crocodile (1972) and Un Foutu Monde pour un blanchisseur trop honnête (1979). Tansi, who was also a distinguished novelist and stage director and founder of the country’s leading theatre company Rocado Zulu Theatre, created images of the tyrants of modern Africa that rivaled those of Soyinka, in a gruesome style described as creating a “grotesque world.” Tansi’s plays include Conscience de tracteur (1979), Qui a mangé Madame d’Avoine Bergtha (first performed 1984), Moi, veuve de l’empire (1987), and his version of Romeo and Juliet, titled La Rue des mouches, produced in France in 1990. Tchicaya U Tam’si is best known for Le Bal de N’Dinga (1988), a dance-drama on the theme of decolonization. Le Zulu (1977), first staged at the Avignon Festival in Avignon, France, is a tragedy based on the legendary African warrior Chaka, seeing in him a great leader destroyed by power. (Chaka, of course, has been the subject of many other plays and epic poems from African writers, from Senghor and Soyinka to Mali’s Seydou Badian with Le Mort de Chaka, 1962). Tchicaya’s Le Maréchal Nnikon Nniku Prince qu’on sort (first performed 1979; The Glorious Destiny of Marshall Nnikon Nniku) is a splendid satirical comedy about a mad dictator. Theatre activity based on companies often creating their own work has remained buoyant in the Republic of the Congo into the 21st century, despite the political and social difficulties of that area.

The level of theatrical activity in Francophone countries not specifically noted in the summary above is, as suggested earlier, variable, but nowhere is it less than enthusiastic, often through the efforts of amateur or semiprofessional companies. Modern Francophone theatre in Africa is often deeply involved in the exploration and artistic exploitation of traditional performance forms (dance, song, mime, mask, storytelling, and so on), seeing it as imperative to rescue and where necessary reinvigorate those forms that are, by their very nature, both popular and the ancient precolonial possession of the people. There is also a very sophisticated incorporation of avant-garde and intellectual theatre influences from Europe, especially France, and in common with Anglophone theatre a passionate and articulate critique of both colonialism and neocolonialism.